


Stay

by badluckvixen13 (alteringviews)



Series: 1 Million for Black Hermione [7]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Black Hermione Granger, F/M, Fake Names, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Inspired by Rihanna's Stay, Military Backstory, Underhanded Business
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 03:32:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8874136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alteringviews/pseuds/badluckvixen13
Summary: He wants her to stay... Or maybe, he knows she won't once she learns the truth. He isn't sure, but he knows that her patience is wearing thin. It's now or never.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I know... Draco x Hermione. I'm not sure why, but I couldn't make my mind do this song with Viktor and Hermione. I don't know. I'm not sure if there will be more of these, but just know that HermionexRon will not be happening long term in any story...

“I can’t do this anymore,” Hermione said into the darkness of his bedroom.

He sat up and licked his lips, refusing to look at her in all of her luscious curves and decadent brown skin. Skin that was warm to touch and always overheated for him. He could change her mind, put his hand between her legs, roll her over onto her stomach and play with her the way he knew she liked. The way that made her a body of need and turned off her logical mind for as long as he could keep her hot and bothered.

The way that he’d been staving off this conversation for weeks. She’d let him slide in between work, in between his job, in between pleasure and stress and having it out with her best friends about him. 

Let him keep this secret, never making him tell her the truth because Hermione was everything, including merciful. They’d talked about everything. About the war, about what he’d been made to do… about what she’d been made to do as well. Their regrets and everything… 

Everything except his parents. 

He thought maybe he had a little bit more time to make her forget, or at least figure out a way to tell her the truth, but she’d been the one to get the mail from his mailbox on the way into see him a few days ago and there was no doubt that she’d seen it. The expense envelope and the seal of his family, the family he’d left behind what seemed like not long enough ago. 

He let out a breath and turned to look at her. She was lying on her side, sheets pulled up to her neck. 

“I just… can’t do this anymore, Dax.”

His jaw clenched, “Dax… was my grandfather.”

She turned, shifting to meet his eyes.

“It’s… not even my middle name,” he said and looked at her, his platinum blonde hair loose from their activities and sweat, it was soft gracing his forehead and he looked at her and all of her wild curls. She’d let it grow in the years they’d been together, now an impressive length and mass. 

“The letter… is from my father… He wants me to come home… My mother is ill.”

She sat up, taking his hand and he could only wince at the feeling because he didn’t deserve her compassion. Those people he’d been born to don't deserve her compassion either. 

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said. “The both of them had it coming.”

Hermione licked her lips, hearing the bitterness in his voice, “Would it be… too much to ask what happened?”

“Yes,” he said thickly and squeezed her hand. “But if it will make you stay, I’ll answer.”

Hermione frowned, “I’m not sure if I want to stay if it hurts so much to tell me.”

His lips twitched. That’s her alright. Hermione, seeing through all the mists and mirrors straight to the heart of him with those brown eyes that saw everything. He remembered when their eyes had first met across the room at the bar. Slate gray and brown meeting, mingling and having a conversation of too many words for them not to have said a word to one another. She’d been pulled away first and he’d gone after her to introduce himself. 

Dax is what he’d told people to call him. It was how he introduced himself to everyone he met. Gods how easy it had been, thinking that it would just be one night, maybe too, but she’d surprised him. She hadn’t fallen for his charm. She hadn’t even seemed inclined to take him to bed no matter how handsome she obviously found him. Instead, she’d talked him into sitting with her and actually talking about something more than the normal bar conversation. It was clear that her friends had ditched her for their conquests for the night, but she didn’t seem to mind, there to watch the game with them and perhaps strike up some interesting conversation. 

They’d traded phone numbers and somehow… not once, had he thought of taking her to bed. At least until they started dating, meeting for lunch, dinner, breakfast on the occasions when she could spare the time. Before long they were dating… before long he was in love and before much longer he found that finally getting her into bed with him was more about proving himself worth it and relishing the way she moved when her mind was turned off. 

It had made him feel like he’d finally found something he couldn’t live without. 

“My parents are wealthy,” he said. “Wealthy beyond reason and moral too… They believed that the only way to protect their wealth was to… make sure they had heirs to do so, heirs they deemed appropriate. When my grandfather died… they engaged me to the daughter of one of their closest friends.”

Pansy Parkinson a sly, conniving woman who saw in him more money than heart or feeling. She’d dug her claws in as deep as she could and he’d escaped missing a large part of him straight to the military to fight in the war. He'd hoped he die out there, but it hadn't happened. 

“I left,” he said. “Went to war. Came back. Got a fake ID, left France and came to England.”

He looked up, “This house… was my grandmothers. She left it to my grandfather who in turn left it to me… I picked up odd jobs here and there to stay busy, to get out of the house since the fund my grandfather established for me is so well invested.”

Hermione eyed him. She’d had a feeling that he was from a rather wealthy family, not because of hs clothes, but because of his tastes. He was alone in being able to sit through wine tastings with her and other such events as Harry and Ron were the types to fall asleep or ask why there was barely any wine in the glass. It had made it incredibly hard to get them involved with her business that was all about high-quality food and fine dining during business deals. After all, after the war, she’d set about making sure that she never had to resort to government payments ever again in life to afford the necessities. She’d made sure that she could afford the finer things too. She’d taken etiquette classes to blend in with the people she rubbed elbows with and climbed to the top of her department. 

“It was… only a matter of time before they found me,” he said. “And I doubt that she’s actually ill.”

She frowned, “Why… would your father make that up?”

“Because he’s a manipulative, conniving arse.”

Hermione’s lips twitched and she leaned against him, “Dax…”

He let out a shuddering breath, the familiar and almost hated feeling of wanting to hear his name on her lips, his real name, washed over him. God, how he hated this.

“I can’t… stay with you if you won’t trust me,” she said. “You’ve trusted me with the war, with… you mind, your body too… I just can’t understand why you won’t trust me with this too.”

He let out another breath. 

“I know… there are things that I would never understand. My parents were dentists at a pro-bono clinic. I didn’t grow up with all the niceties in the world, but I grew up happy. Your past… whatever it is… Feels like a wall and as stubborn as I am, I know when a wall won’t budge, when it’s too high and too wide to get around.”

He licked his lips and closed his eyes, “Your parents… were killed in an oil fire in Cambridge.”

She looked up.

“The warehouse had a leak and a guard threw a lit cigarette… it spread through the whole neighborhood,” he said thickly. 

“How… did you know that?’

“What you don’t know… is that the leak was intentional. A certain company wanted the strip and given everything that was beside the warehouse… it was easier to burn it all, plummet property taxes, and buy out the owners.”

Hermione stared at him. 

“The company in question got lots of publicity for paying out the owners to rebuild elsewhere, moving them into newer buildings that were vacant, for cleaning up the mess and condemning the oil company… A company that they owned a very large piece of and eventually bought out.”

“Dax…”

“341 people for all of a 2 billion dollars in cash, half of which was kicked back in the form of tax-breaks and under the table dealings.”

“Dax…”

“The owners of said company,” he started. “Even went to the graves of all the victims, laying flowers, giving money to the victims’ families through their Foundation.”

“Dax, stop it.”

He looked at her, “Malfoy Enterprises, Hermione. Lucious and Narcissa Malfoy.”

She swallowed, her stomach queasy and she looked at him, really looked at him. Platinum blond hair, the nose, the eyes… 

_Oh god…_

“Draco Lucious Malfoy,” he said steadily looking at her, searching her face. “Draco _Lucious_ _**Malfoy**_.”

Her jaw trembled and she looked at him. 

“Could you ever… stay with the son the monsters who took your parents from you because they wanted a bit of land?”

Hermione met his eyes steadily, seeing something else there, something else that he wouldn’t say. 

“What do you want from me, Dax?”

He swallowed, “Say it, Hermione. Say my name.”

“Draco Lucious Malfoy,” she repeated dutifully, evenly. “What do you want from me?”

His jaw shook, swallowing and looking at her lost and confused, “I… I want you to stay.”

Hermione took his hands and looked down, “Do you?”

He licked his lips and she threaded a hand through his hair. 

“The horrors your parents have committed, whether I’m a victim of it or not, does not make you a monster, Draco.”

He shuddered at the sound of his name. He hadn’t heard it for so long… He’d forgotten what it sounded like. All of his darkest fantasies that maybe she would love him still, maybe she would stay there in those two syllables. 

The way she says them evenly and without fear.

“Do you think no one can love you because of who your family is?”

He swallowed and moved back. 

“Or is that you find a hard to loving you because of who your family is?”

He grunted at the spike of pain and moved to get out of bed, she stopped him, taking his hand more firmly.

“This… is what I’m talking about, Draco.” He shivered as she went on, getting on her knees, “You put your hands on me and for not one moment do you let me overwhelm you with pleasure. I know you like making me feel good, making me feel wanted, but you never let me do the same… While I’m glad that you told me, Draco, your real name isn’t the wall I was talking about. It’s this… desperate need to wrap me up in what you can do for me, to me rather than what we could be together.”

He looked at her and she took his hands. 

“For god’s sake, you won’t even let me give you a blowjob.”

He swallowed and met her eyes. 

“I’m here because I know you,” she said. “Rose by any other name and all that. You can be a bit of an arse, and a prat, but I love you anyway. Dax, Draco, whoever.”

His eyes burned and he looked at her. 

“Won’t you let me?” She asked, pulling him towards her. “Won’t you love yourself too?”

“What if I am?” Draco asked. “What if I am just as much of a monster as they are? What if I go back and I change?”

“You didn’t leave because you thought the name Malfoy would change you. You left because you refused to be changed,” she said simply. “I don’t think this faked attempt at getting you back there will do anything to you, Draco… except maybe piss you off.”

Draco sunk to the bed and let her cup his face, tugging him down to kiss, “Let me love you, Draco? All of you?”

Draco closed his eyes and leaned forward, pulling her against him, a hand in his hair. 

“Will you… come with me?”

“Of course.”

He nodded into her shoulder, “S-Say it again?”

“I love you, Draco,” she said softly, pressing a kiss to his shoulder and wrapping her arms around him. “I love you.”

“I’m sorry. I’m… I’m so sorry.”

She hushed him, “It’s not--”

“They wouldn’t listen, no one would listen--”

“You tried.”

“Not hard enough--”

“You did everything you could,” Hermione said, firmly. “Your family having enough money to buy the legal system does not undermine the fact that you tried to do what was right.”

Draco swallowed thickly. 

“Come back to bed?”

He nodded crawling across the bed to join her beneath the comforter. For once, he lets her hold him close, a hand in his hair stroking and speaking softly as she soothed him. 

It isn’t perfect. God knows what he’ll have to deal with stepping back into “Draco Malfoy” if he does go back and if he doesn’t how this will change their relationship. He doesn’t know anything except for the fact that she hasn’t left him, that she’s holding him like… 

He licked his lips, “What is it that you want, Hermione?”

“I want you to stay.”


End file.
